Ruth Laredo,
Pianist Who Recorded Rachmaninoff, Dies at 67

Ruth Laredo, a pianist equally at home in chamber music and
solo works who was known for landmark recordings of Scriabin and
Rachmaninoff, died on Wednesday at her apartment in New York. She was 67.

Steve J. Sherman, 1999

Ruth Laredo in 1999 at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, where she performed in the long-running "Concerts With
Commentary" series.

Ms. Laredo, who played her last concert on May 6 at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, had cancer and died in her sleep, said her
manager, James Murtha.

The concert was one of a series she had given for 17
years at the Met called "Concerts With Commentary," in which Ms. Laredo
played and spoke engagingly about music. The series had become an
important part of the New York concert scene, where she was a frequent
presence.

Just two days after the attack on the World Trade Center, Ms. Laredo
celebrated the 25th anniversary of her Alice Tully Hall debut with a
recital there. It was the opening concert of the 2001 Lincoln Center
season, and Ms. Laredo addressed the audience beforehand, saying: "It
was important for me to play. Great music gives us spiritual sustenance
and gives us hope. It is in that spirit that I play tonight."

Ms. Laredo was a pianist in the Romantic mold, a dynamic performer
concerned with texture and color. In recent years, Mr. Murtha said, her
career as a soloist with orchestras had waned, but she was comfortable
with a mix of recitals, chamber concerts and accompanying duties.

When she was first on the rise, in the 1970's, Ms. Laredo was a
relative rarity as a female piano soloist, particularly in the
technically demanding and muscular works of Rachmaninoff. There were
only a few others - Gina Bachauer, Myra Hess and later Alicia de
Larrocha, for example.

"Every time we did interviews in those early days, she was asked how
does it feel to be a woman pianist," Mr. Murtha said. "She wanted to be
a pianist, period."

Ruth Meckler was born in Detroit on Nov. 20, 1937. She attended the
Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Rudolf
Serkin. She graduated in 1960 and that same year married the violinist
Jaime Laredo, with whom she collaborated musically. They later divorced.
Ms. Laredo is survived by their daughter, Jennifer Laredo, who lives in
London with her husband, the cellist Paul Watkins, and by a
granddaughter.

Ms. Laredo made her debut with an orchestra in 1962, in a program led
by Leopold Stokowski conducting the American Symphony Orchestra at
Carnegie Hall. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic,
conducted by Pierre Boulez, 12 years later. Her Carnegie Hall solo
recital debut came only in 1981.

At Curtis, Serkin schooled her in the basics of Mozart and Beethoven,
turning a disapproving eye on her youthful love for Rachmaninoff. But it
was with his music, as well as that of his fellow Russian Scriabin, that
she made her mark.

In the 1970's she recorded two pioneering and acclaimed sets: the
entire Scriabin piano sonatas, for the now-defunct Connoisseur label,
and the complete solo repertory of Rachmaninoff, on seven LP's for CBS
Masterworks.

When Ms. Laredo went to Serkin to ask if he thought she could handle
the Rachmaninoff, he gave his blessing. " 'You must do it' was the
answer he gave me," Ms. Laredo said in a 1987 interview with The New
York Times.

But preparing for the recordings was a fearsome and wearing task. "I
had to learn the many, many Rachmaninoff pieces that no one plays, and I
found out why no one does," she said. "It's because they're so hard."
She later channeled her love for Rachmaninoff into scholarship,
preparing a new edition of his piano preludes for the C. F. Peters music
publisher.

The Scriabin LP's came when little of his music was available on
record, and they helped spark a surge of his popularity in the United
States. Ms. Laredo said that she first heard his music at a concert of
Vladimir Horowitz and was dazzled.

Bernard Holland, a Times music critic, wrote of her playing of
Scriabin's music: "Ms. Laredo's sensuous, beautifully controlled playing
caught its mad and slightly evil quality."

By Daniel J. Wakin
Reprinted from The New York Times
Published: May 27, 2005

Concert Pianist Ruth Laredo
Dies at 67

Ruth Laredo, the elegant pianist who recorded the entire solo works
of Rachmaninoff and the sonatas of Scriabin, has died. She was 67.

Laredo died Wednesday in her apartment, said her manager James
Murtha. She had ovarian cancer and last performed May 6 at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Detroit-born Laredo graduated from the Curtis Institute of
Music in Philadelphia in 1960. Over the years, she played at such
venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and the
White House, playing at solo recitals, with orchestras and chamber
music groups.

''In the classical world, there's only been a handful of prominent
women pianists over the years, and she certainly was one of them,''
Murtha said. Her Web site referred to her as ''America's First Lady of
Piano.''

For the past several years, she gave well-received concerts at the
Metropolitan Museum. At those events, called ''Concerts with
Commentary,'' she would not only play the works of a range of
composers, but discuss them with the audience. The series was so
popular that she started holding them around the country.

Laredo also played around the world, notably in an extensive tour
of Russia and the Ukraine with concerts in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and
Odessa.

She was particularly known for two sets of recordings, the complete
solo works of Rachmaninoff and the piano sonatas of Scriabin, both
recorded in the 1970s and re-issued in recent years. Laredo also
recorded works by Ravel, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven, among others,
and was nominated for a Grammy award three times.

Her passion for music extended beyond the keyboard. She contributed
to ''Piano Today'' magazine and National Public Radio, wrote ''The
Ruth Laredo Becoming A Musician Book'' and worked as editor of the
complete ''Rachmaninoff Preludes for Piano.''

She also appeared as a pianist in Woody Allen's ''Small Time
Crooks,'' the 2000 movie with Hugh Grant and Tracy Ullman.

Laredo, who divorced the violinist Jamie Laredo in the 1970s, is
survived by her daughter, Jennifer, who is married to cellist Paul
Watkins, and a granddaughter.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 27, 2005

please scroll downFOR MORE
INFORMATION ON THIS GREAT ARTIST
- SHE LEFT US MUCH TOO SOON -

"Astonishing...a whip-cracking performance."--The New
York Times

"
A special blend of intensity and rare poetry. She played
up a storm." --The Washington Post

"...one of the great American pianists."
--The Christian Science Monitor

These annual events have proven that New York audiences love the
informality of Ruth Laredo's Concerts with Commentary...She speaks
from the heart then she performs the music, creating a living portrait of
the composer and his life and times.

This season
featured the music of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Shostakovich, in a three-concert series
titled "The Russian Spirit"with
special guests Courtenay Budd, soprano and the St. Petersburg String
Quartet.

Ruth Laredo recently took part in
Russian Festival "International Week"

Pianist Ruth Laredo was invited by the
Ministry of Culture of Russia to take part in the
Russian Festival "International Week" held by
the St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after Rimsky-Korsakov from
September 20-27, 2004. This year the Festival
was be dedicated to the bicentenary of the great Russian composer,
Mikhail Glinka.

Ms. Laredo, a 3-time
Grammy nominated artist known for her recordings of Rachmaninoff and
Scriabin, took an active part in the festival program, performing
both as soloist and chamber music player and conducting a master class for
Russian students.

Pianist summons
perfect storm of music

"Ruth Laredo, known as
'America's First Lady of the Piano,' is gifted with steely fingers,
prodigious technique, a passionate temperament and an affinity for dark
and heavy music.

In her superb recital
Wednesday night at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the renowned artist
plunged into pieces by composers who pushed and expanded the expressive
powers of the piano. Shrewdly balancing familiar and lesser-known works,
she played with ringing tone, intense presence and innate musicianship."